Pedro Almodóvar's latest, set on a plane bound for Mexico, is a stale rehash
of the director's signature ingredients, says Jenny McCartney.

This farce, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, is set in a Mexico-bound aeroplane that’s forced to circle Toledo in search of an empty runway because its landing gear is broken.

It has some of the signature Almodóvar ingredients which once felt so fresh: the ageing Spanish femme fatale; nutty girls and gay men on the sexual rampage; a crazy pile-up of confusions; and the rapid escalation of lunacy. Be warned, however: the treatment here is as stale as the cabin air.

Something weirdly inert lies at the heart of the whole enterprise. The plane never feels like a plane at all but an immobile set, which immediately takes us into the realm of theatre rather than comedy.

The trouble is that, even as theatre, it’s scarcely ever funny, unless you think that a bisexual pilot and an in-the-closet co-pilot, a virgin psychic, a trio of camp stewards, a dominatrix and a corrupt banker are inherently hilarious.

But Almodóvar, having created such a stable of look-at-me characters, can’t seem to think what to do with them beyond set them all rather pointlessly to heavy drinking, drugs and energetic sex.

They don’t make us cry, nor do they make us laugh. The result is like one of those terrible, over-excited Eighties frat-house films, but with a gay gloss. This time, it’s a good idea to leave the Almodóvar party early.

Most of the passengers on the plane spend the majority of the film fast asleep, sedated to the eyeballs. How I wish I could have joined them.